Finally, in 1976 conservative ideologues rallied behind Ronald Reagan and brought his challenge to incumbent President Gerald Ford within a few convention votes of success. Four years later, the Reaganites swept to victory, capturing the whole machinery of the Republican Party—and demonstrating that with today’s nomination process, true believers who disdain compromise and equivocation can not only nominate their candidates of choice but shift the ideological orientation of our great political parties.

The old argument that party bosses stymie insurgent or issues-driven campaigns no longer applies to political reality– not in an era when campaigns in both parties cater so obviously to enthusiastic activists who dominate the early primaries.

5. FRINGE PARTIES GENERALLY DISCREDIT RATHER THAN ADVANCE THE ISSUES THEY EMBRACE

Apologists for minor parties regularly defend their odd-ball activism with the claim that they’re gradually, inexorably building support for their unconventional ideas. The Libertarian Party in particular insists that it’s made steady progress for its philosophy of limited government with its thirty years of tireless campaigning.

In fact, the electoral record shows dramatic deterioration in the party’s electoral appeal rather than any discernable increase in influence, as the once trendy Libertarians have morphed into the goofy and sophomoric Losertarians. The Party reached its all-time peak of success with its second major Presidential campaign under Ed Clark in 1980. Running against Ronald Reagan, Clark drew 921,000 votes and a rousing 1.06% of the electorate. The next time out, the Libertarians did barely half as well and after that the party’s fortunes continued to slide. In 2000, Libertarian nominee Harry Browne won only 0.36% and in 2004, the hapless Michael Badnarik did even worse, with less than 0.33%.

In other words, after a quarter of century or propaganda and party-building, the Libertarians succeeded in alienating two thirds of their never significant support – looking back on their 1% showing of twenty-seven years ago as a matchless achievement that’s never even come close to replication.

The traditional definition of insanity involves repeating the same self-destructive actions again and again but somehow expecting a more beneficial result. After twenty-four years of frustration, futility, and consistent public rejection, on what basis do Losertarians suddenly expect a brighter future?

Among the faceless cavalcade of Libertarian losers, one of their Presidential candidates manages to stand out – not because of his strong showing (he drew only 0.47% of the vote) but because he drew the right message from his embarrassing experience. Texas obstetrician Ron Paul carried the fringe-party’s banner in 1988 but soon thereafter returned to the Republican Party, won election to Congress, and conducted a dynamic and much publicized campaign for the GOP Presidential nomination in 2008. Dr. Paul garnered vastly more attention for his ideals and proposals as a contender for the Republican nomination than he ever did as the Libertarian nominee—a living demonstration of the ill-considered idiocy of fringe party campaigns.

Rather than advancing unconventional ideas, fringe parties most often discredit them through association with quirky political organizations far outside the political mainstream. The Prohibition Party, for instance, took opponents of alcohol out of the major parties and concentrated them in a marginal political organization which, during 134 years of fielding candidates, elected one Congressman from California (1914) and one Governor of Florida (1916) but almost nothing else. In terms of Presidential politics, the party managed its best showing ever in 1892 (2.25%), some 27 years before temperance advocates finally succeeded in achieving Prohibition through the 18th Amendment to the Constitution. Predictably, Republicans – rather than members of the Prohibition Party actually were the effective leaders in bringing about this historic change. The Prohibition platform succeeded, in other words, only when true-believers entered one of the established parties, leaving the fringe party and watching its electoral support decline.

By the same token, Populists saw meaningful progress for their national agenda only after the party largely collapsed and its most gifted members migrated into the Democratic Party beginning in 1896. Somehow, even crack-pot ideas (like the bizarre Populist obsession with “Free Silver”) look less menacing when they’re advocated by leaders of a well-established political organization rather than by a turbulent fringe group.

6. YOU CAN’T INFLUENCE A PARTY BY LEAVING IT

One of the most bizarre arguments for third parties involves the suggestion that walking out of one of the established parties will force it to move in your direction.

This reasoning constitutes sheer madness, of course: what sort of maniac honestly believes that he’ll exert greater impact on a political organization after he’s abandoned his membership?

In 2000, when Pat Buchanan abandoned the Republicans for his disastrous “Reform Party” race (in which he selected an LA teacher with his history of mental disability as his running mate), he took with him some of his fellow GOP advocates of a more protectionist trade policy. The result, predictably enough, was a Republican Party more unanimous than ever in support of free trade. Why should Republicans take protectionist arguments more seriously when the few supporters of such arguments have already left the party?

Party walk-outs don’t produce some sudden desire for reconciliation any more than marital walk-outs serve to strengthen a fraying relationship. When a faction abandons its major party home, it’s rarely welcomed back into the fold – especially when the party disloyalty has produced a major defeat. Take the case of Ralph Nader, for instance, with his incontestably destructive impact on Al Gore’s 2000 Presidential bid: even if the gadfly wanted to re-enter the Democratic Party, the deep resentment of his role in the election of George W. Bush would make it impossible for him to assume a position of respect or influence.

7. LOSING CAMPAIGNS DON’T SHAPE GOVERNANCE OR POLICY

For third party purists, rejection by the general public confirms their sense of moral superiority and martyrdom: winning 0.03% with uncompromising principles feels somehow nobler than winning an election through the normal compromises and actually changing the direction of politics. In this sense, fringe party activism represents the ultimate in masturbatory politics: giving intense pleasure and passing thrills to the individual participants but exerting no impact whatever on anyone else.

On those rare occasions when third parties play some decisive role in close elections, they almost always damage the candidates who more closely resemble the independent contenders. Former Republican Ross Perot, for example, destroyed Republican President George H.W. Bush, leftist Ralph Nader damaged Al Gore, and “limited government” Libertarian Senate candidates in Montana, Washington, Georgia and other states recently swung elections to big government Democrats (and in 2006 tilted at least three close elections to give Harry Reid his one-vote Senate majority).

By taking votes from the major party contender who’s ideologically most similar, and rewarding those opponents who agree with them the least, independent candidates move the political process away from their professed goals, not toward them.

Most Americans have come to understand this cruel and dangerous game, so that even the most ballyhooed fringe candidates fail to live up to their promising poll numbers. In 1980, moderate Republican John Anderson believed the surveys and pundits who said he could establish himself as a middle-of-the-road alternative to the outspoken conservative Ronald Reagan and the failed liberal standard-bearer, Jimmy Carter. In the end, Anderson drew only 6.6%, fading fast in the last days before the election as the American people began to focus on the true stakes in the choice before them.

This pattern repeats itself in almost every election: even the most intriguing third-party flirtations abruptly turn sour in the “getting serious” phase that precedes a final decision. With an evenly divided electorate providing see-saw victories for Democrats and Republicans, an individual can change history far more readily by voting for one of the major candidates than by giving his support to a laughably irrelevant fringy. A shift of 0.5% can alter the outcome of many elections, but it changes nothing if a Constitution Party candidate gets 0.7% vs. 0.2%.

In this context, the American people remain too sensible to accept the fulminations of brain-dead blowhards like Lou Dobbs. “All that seems to remain of the Republican and Democratic parties is their partisanship, their labels, and their records of intransigence and ineffectiveness over the past forty years.” Over the past forty years, Mr. Dobbs? Since 1967? The Reagan Revolution, which won the Cold War and slashed top tax rates from 70% to 28%, represented only “intransigence and ineffectiveness”? Welfare reform and balanced budgets, achieved by the Gingrich Congress in collaboration with the administration of Bill Clinton, amounted to nothing more than “partisanship”?

Third party purists say they refuse to accept a choice between “the lesser of two evils” – a wretchedly misleading line that suggests that any public servant with whom we disagree is, indeed, evil and not merely wrong. In truth, very few working politicians, Republican or Democrat, honestly qualify as “evil”: the need for winning and retaining office won’t eliminate all mediocrities, but almost always rids us of any truly malevolent individuals. The notion that electoral opponents constitute “evil” of any kind – either the lesser or greater variety – serves only to poison our politics, and to prevent mature choices between major party candidates who, while invariably flawed, give us a chance to serve our country by selecting the better of two imperfects.